Chinese writing proves literal YEC Genesis?

[Psycho Smiley]

Anyone else heard this one before? A bunch of dumbasses are doing a presentation on this 'proof' here tomorrow, so I was wondering if anyone has encountered it before.

It's based on misinterpreting the composition of Chinese characters, and making up a story about how the components prove passages from Genesis. Shit like "Boat" is made from "vessel", "person" and "eight", and the Bible said eight people were on the Ark, so "Boat" proves Genesis.

Never mind that 1) they mis-identified the components, 2) two components indicate pronunciation, not meaning, and 3) the character didn't even exist in the timeframe the morons insist it was created in.

I've done some brief research on the topic, and have refutations of the general method, specific characters, and the history of one of the books they may be pulling this shit out of.

Any pointers?

[Darth Wong]

The fact that there is no corresponding Global Flood story in Chinese mythology should rather easily disprove the absurd notion that the letters were constructed in such a manner as to hide an encrypted message about this story.

[Zor]

Liquistics are an intresting thing as many lauguages work on diferent. As far as i know, chinese (like Japanese lacks plurals). It could very well state that a Person owned eight boats and a boat with a complement of 8 is the exact OPOSITE of unbeleivable.

Zor

[Zor]

Fundies also think that the most vauge peice of evidence could by the most massive streach could equate to somthing suporting there case, but clear evidence Against there case is not valid.

Zor

[Psycho Smiley]

The fact that there is no corresponding Global Flood story in Chinese mythology should rather easily disprove the absurd notion that the letters were constructed in such a manner as to hide an encrypted message about this story.

Ouch. That ought to have an interesting explanation. "Oh, they forgot the story, even though their writing should have reminded them of it daily."

And Zor, the texts I've seen say that the first part of the character indicate some sort of vessel, and the second part, which tells you how to pronounce it, also tells you it's specifically a 'boat'. Eight doesn't even have anything to do with it. They're just full of shit.

I'm expecting to be told something along the lines of "that's an interesting point of view, now sit down and shut up or leave."

[Psycho Smiley]

Hmm. I googled Chinese flood stories, and in the first few pages had a list of stories thrown at me:

# China:
The Supreme Sovereign ordered the water god Gong Gong to create a flood as punishment and warning for human misbehavior. Gong Gong extended the flood for 22 years. The supernatural hero Gun stole Growing Soil from heaven to dam the waters, but he was executed for his theft before he finished. However, his body didn't decay, and when it was cut apart three years later, his son Yu emerged in the form of a horned dragon. Yu drove away Gong Gong and finished damming the floodwaters. [Walls, pp. 94-98]

The goddess Nu Kua fought and defeated the chief of a neighboring tribe. The chief, chagrined at being defeated by a woman, beat his head against the Heavenly Bamboo, knocking it down and tearing a hole in the sky. Floods poured out, but Nu Kua patched the hole with a plaster made from stones of five different colors. [Vitaliano, p. 163]

# Bahnar (Cochin China):
A kite once quarrelled with the crab and pecked a hole in its skull. In revenge, the crab caused the sea and rivers to swell until the waters reached the sky. The only survivors were a brother and sister who took a pair of all kinds of animals with them in a huge chest. They floated for seven days and nights. Then the brother heard a cock crowing outside, sent by the spirits to signal that the flood had abated. All disembarked. The brother and sister did not know how they would live, for they had eaten all the rice that was stored in the chest. However, a black ant brought two grains of rice. The brother planted them, and the plain was covered with a rice crop the next morning. [Gaster, p. 98]

# Lolo (southwestern China):
In primeval times, men were wicked. The patriarch Tse-gu-dzih sent a messenger down to earth, asking for some flesh and blood from a mortal. Only one man, Du-mu, complied. In wrath, Tse-gu-dzih locked the rain-gates, and the waters mounted to the sky. Du-mu was saved in a log hollowed out of a Pieris tree, together with his four sons and otters, wild ducks, and lampreys. The civilized peoples who can write are descended from the sons; the ignorant races are descendants of wooden figures whom Du-mu constructed after the deluge. [Gaster, pp. 99-100]

China
The Chinese classic called the Hihking tells about "the family of Fuhi," that was saved from a great flood. This ancient story tells that the entire land was flooded; the mountains and everything, however one family survived in a boat. The Chinese consider this man the father of their civilization. This record indicates that Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters were the only people that escaped the great flood. It is claimed, that he and his family were the only people alive on earth, and repopulated the world.


What's the story here?

[Darth Wong]

Shit, I never heard of those stories. That's the problem with Chinese mythology; it's fucking huge.

Nevertheless, those stories actually weaken the case for Chinese mythology supporting Christian mythology. Consider the fact that they effectively describe the world being flooded several times, when Christian mythology says it was only done once. Not to mention the huge discrepancies between those stories and the Christian stories; one common rhetorical trick when looking for cross-cultural connections is to focus only on that which is similar, while ignoring that which is different.

[Zor]

Shit, I never heard of those stories. That's the problem with Chinese mythology; it's fucking huge.

(Nitpick) Correction, there are Multiple Chinese Mythologies. It is quite a Diverse nation. (Nitpick)

Zor

[Straha]

ACtually, if I recall correctly, there was a chinese noah story. Only He dammed the flood, was 'picked' emperor by the preceding one because he was the best man for the job, and then he went around on building projects, and fighting wars for stability. If I recall correctly one story about him is that he was so pre-occupied with China that when he was married he only spent three days with his wife, before running off to finish whatever he'd been doing.

I may have messed some of that up, but I'll see if I can find the book which gave me it before the end of the day.

[HemlockGrey]

Since ancient civilizations arose on fertile riverways which often flooded, a lot of them have flood stories. Even the ancient Greeks have a flood story, which I think has been theorized to have something to do with the Bosporus and the Black Sea.

In the case of the Chinese, the Yellow River floods like a motherfucker, especially before modern engineering techniques, providing a rather easy explanation for Chinese flood mythology.

[wolveraptor]

Humanity, being one species, might have some subconscious, primeval fears expressed in stories. For example, fear of the dark in small children is common across cultures. Perhaps fear of the all-destroying flood is common as well. In Hindu mythology, there is a flood tale that is shockingly similar to the Judeo-Christian one.

Matsyavatar
A priest catches a fish that is too small to eat, and prepares to throw it back in, but the fish beseeches him not to do it, for fear of being eaten by bigger fish. So the priest, out of sympathy, keeps the fish in a jar. Soon, the fish grows too large for the jar, and is moved to successively larger and larger jars, until it is of cetacean proportions. It then warns the priest of a flood (apparently totally arbitrary; no punishment here), and tells him to take his wife and every animal he can collect and seeds (no real emphasis on '2 of every kind' or anything), and stand on the shore, while the fish pulls a boat up to the group, picks them up, and saves them all. Turns out the fish is an incarnation of Vishnu, the preserver. The whole thing is supposed to emphasize kindness to even the smallest living thing, not fear of God's wrath. The morals are very different here.

[PainRack]

Ouch. That ought to have an interesting explanation. "Oh, they forgot the story, even though their writing should have reminded them of it daily."

That's exactly what Ancient said on SB. I sorta had to remind him that this momentous story, one that influenced the writing of several thousand, yes, THOUSAND years laters is not recorded in Chinese records, and that Nuwa is categorically stated to be female, despite all the bulltwisting one tries to turn up. Interestingly, I also found out that yes, the Christian researchers were right when they claimed that Nuwa being a female goddess is historical revision. The orginal story was that she was a female DRAGON, with horns and tail....... which seems IMHO to resemble more the image of the devil than a dragon, but what the heck.

China
The Chinese classic called the Hihking tells about "the family of Fuhi," that was saved from a great flood. This ancient story tells that the entire land was flooded; the mountains and everything, however one family survived in a boat. The Chinese consider this man the father of their civilization. This record indicates that Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters were the only people that escaped the great flood. It is claimed, that he and his family were the only people alive on earth, and repopulated the world.

Okay, where did this story come from? I don't remotely recall anything similar and I did research back on this when I called out Ancient claims.........

[PainRack]

ACtually, if I recall correctly, there was a chinese noah story. Only He dammed the flood, was 'picked' emperor by the preceding one because he was the best man for the job, and then he went around on building projects, and fighting wars for stability. If I recall correctly one story about him is that he was so pre-occupied with China that when he was married he only spent three days with his wife, before running off to finish whatever he'd been doing.

I may have messed some of that up, but I'll see if I can find the book which gave me it before the end of the day.

How is this a noah story? The story of the Sage Emperor is nothing remotely similar to Noah, considering that in his case, the moral was over man ability to control nature, when he stabilised the rivers using a mixture of magic and simple engineering, when he built hundreds and thousand of dikes. The "floods" didn't destroy entire mankind, nor was there a boat or anything remotely similar.

Furthermore, one must be wary of "retro" revision of stories. For example, the chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms had a clearly Christian inspired tale of Pang Juan ordering the two women to cut up a baby so as to prove ownership. However, considering that the story was written in the Ming Dynasty, where christianity had already made its inroads into China, its clear that Song wrote the story in as opposed to this being an historical case.

Considering that chinese mythology never did survive the cataylsm of the Qin dynasty and the subsequent Confucian revivial, all stories should always be examined to see whether it had been contaiminated.

[Straha]

ACtually, if I recall correctly, there was a chinese noah story. Only He dammed the flood, was 'picked' emperor by the preceding one because he was the best man for the job, and then he went around on building projects, and fighting wars for stability. If I recall correctly one story about him is that he was so pre-occupied with China that when he was married he only spent three days with his wife, before running off to finish whatever he'd been doing.

I may have messed some of that up, but I'll see if I can find the book which gave me it before the end of the day.

How is this a noah story? The story of the Sage Emperor is nothing remotely similar to Noah, considering that in his case, the moral was over man ability to control nature, when he stabilised the rivers using a mixture of magic and simple engineering, when he built hundreds and thousand of dikes. The "floods" didn't destroy entire mankind, nor was there a boat or anything remotely similar.

I meant Noah story as in flood story, not as in a destruction of mankind story. That's how I have seen it used before repeatedly, though I can understand the confusion here.

[Thinkmarble]

Ancient civilization were more often when not borne right next to rivers. So it ain't exactly surprising to see flood stories.
Aside, the whole story of Noah and Gensis is as far as I know stolen fro the Babylonians.

[Frank Hipper]

Ancient civilization were more often when not borne right next to rivers. So it ain't exactly surprising to see flood stories.
Aside, the whole story of Noah and Gensis is as far as I know stolen fro the Babylonians.

I've always thought that finding seashells in sedimentary rock on mountains was a plausible idea for why flood stories are so widepread.

[Psycho Smiley]

Well, that went about as well as I expected. Only ten people showed up. 8 were YECs, there for their weekly circle-jerk. Another guy was there for the snacks. So the opposition consists solely of me. Yay. When question period started, and I pointed out that even the authors had disowned the book the presentation was based on, they dropped that like a hot rock and switched into 'convert the heathen' mode.

The entire bit consisted of the usual strawmen on what evolution "really" means, YEC bullshit about science, and much moving of goalposts when I actually refuted something. No surprises there. When I finally got them back to the Chinese characters, it turned into "Who cares what they really mean. What are the odds that even the present form would support Genesis, eh? Eh?"

Then they started handing out tracts from AiG.

I may not have done any damage, but maybe I got someone to think. I doubt it, though.

[Exonerate]

Chinese characters begun as symbolic representations of their meanings, then slowly evolved over time to the form they are now. Even if the portions of that character can be interpreted as the YECs claim, they have little relation to the original character from thousands of years ago.

[PainRack]

.
The entire bit consisted of the usual strawmen on what evolution "really" means, YEC bullshit about science, and much moving of goalposts when I actually refuted something. No surprises there. When I finally got them back to the Chinese characters, it turned into "Who cares what they really mean. What are the odds that even the present form would support Genesis, eh? Eh?"

How on earth do the present form support Genesis at all? The modern day form, which btw, should be the simplified Mandarin used by China doesn't even have the word eight in it and can be easily interpretated as a compressed form of boat+harbour, instead of boat+ 8 mouths.

[Grand Moff Yenchin]

The so-called "Noah Emperor" is Yu of the Xia Dynasty (That's right, the System Lord. He's sort of misinterpretated on the SG-1 official site).

Anyway, he didn't "dam" the flood, that was his father's method, which failed. Yu solved the flood by branching the Yellow River, the good of this method was that it also could provide water for agriculture.


On the "boat" bullshit. I've recently read 2 articles in AiG and found there was some new development in this debate, so I formed a refutation on my friend's blog. It's in Chinese, so I'll just point out some stuff here.

The bullshit of "boat" being a "vessel with eight people" is based on a more modern version of Chinese characters. Totally neglecting the 6 principles of Chinese writing as well as the original oracle bonescript type of Chinese writing. The original publication did try to wave out this problem claiming the "yen"(eight people) on the right of "boat" was not a hieroglyphic.

Bullshit:

The radical which is claimed to be "eight people" is actually a hieroglyphic form of "marsh between mountain". the "eight" is actually water being "divided", the "mouth" is the "door of mountain", obviously meaning a gorge or something like that. The character is pronounced "yen". And adopted as a phonetic radical to "boat", "lead", "along" indicating that these characters are pronounced similar to "yen".


Note that YECers have attempted to answer the "lead = metal with eight mouths", "along = water with eight mouths" rebuttal by claiming that "boat" was the original word and they borrowed it for phonetical purpose.

But as you can see (If my explanation was clear ). Bull + Shit.

[Grand Moff Yenchin]

When I finally got them back to the Chinese characters, it turned into "Who cares what they really mean. What are the odds that even the present form would support Genesis, eh? Eh?"

Then they started handing out tracts from AiG.

The debate is on whether it supports Genesis, and they answer it like this

Are these guys from AiG? In my previous post I mentioned 2 articles, guess what they were? A non-native speaker plant physiologist answering criticisms on the Chinese characters.

I think that says a lot on how solid their arguments are.

[PainRack]

Great. Blog style.